Space for bees
We have grown rightly worried about the decline of the insects that pollinate plants. Without pollinators the countryside dies; pollinators provide every third mouthful of food we consume. Bees are not great travellers: they prefer to poter from flower to flower. What they need is connectivity. So Kent Wildlife Trust is making it possible for
bees to travel by road. Roadside verges can be treated as long, thin nature reserves, places that allow bees to travel small distances, spread and increase. “We look for sites where you can find some of the rarer species of bee, and where there’s the best connectivity,” says the Trust’s Rosie Earwaker. She’s been working with Kent County Council and
Swale Borough Council to establish the right sort of conditions. In most sites, this is a mater of clearing, mowing and removing the clippings: a process that allows wild flowers to regenerate. If it doesn’t work naturally, you can spread seeds or insert plant plugs. The scheme had a target of eight hectares of land
under management; they are already at 11.5 hectares and hope to add more sites. Which is all very well, but it involves another kind of connectivity – connecting wildlife and conservation organisations with people. Many roadsides are managed by mowing them “within an inch of their lives,” as Rosie describes it. We have somehow developed the idea that the ideal green space looks like the fairway on a golf course: which is like saying that the ideal siting room is an airport lounge. We have an unfortunate mania for tidiness,
forgeting that we call an untidy house ‘lived-in’. If we want a lived-in countryside – one lived in by
bees (and toads and water voles and everything else), we must persuade people to accept a litle roughness around the edges. So communication with local people maters. You can’t impose conservation, it has to be carried out with the will of us all. So that again is about connecting.
Developing a long-term vision There’s another crucial move: connecting the present with the future. It’s no good making a series of lovely bee roads if you leave them to fend for themselves. Soon they will become overgrown and lose the very thing that bees love them for. There’s no point to the scheme unless it has a long-term legacy – and that is done by recruiting and training local volunteers to monitor and care for sections of the bee roads. Aſter that we must look for further connections. “Small actions make a difference,” Rosie says.
“We need people to be aware of that. What you do in your garden maters.” Kent Wildlife Trust have started awards for the best gardens for bees and for other wildlife. So they’re joining up people and bees. Bees are part of our lives.
We need them; many of our crops depend on them. They are essential for a wild and living countryside. So we need to make a mental adjustment and see them in a different light: creatures that we must connect with, and whose connections we need to cherish and enlarge.
Bees are part of our lives. We need them. They are essential for a wild and living countryside.
Bees, such as this buff-tailed bumblebee, can do well in cities due to the variety of
trees and flowers available. Gardens help to connect flower-filled foraging areas.
BUFF-TAILED BUMBLEBEE CUT OUT: VICKY NALL, BUFF-TAILED BUMBLEBEE: CHRIS GOMERSALL/2020VISION
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